and uncle had occupied important positions at Court, the latter, Alá-ul-Mulk having been the Kotwál, or Police Magistrate, of Delhi.
In the reign of Firoz's predecessor, Muhammad Tughlak, (1325 to 1351 A. D.) the town of Baran suffered dearly for its proximity to Delhi, being one of the first places where that sanguinary tyrant diverted himself with his favourite spectacle of an unprovoked massacre. In the great famine of 1344, after the removal of the Capital to Deogiri, the country of the Doáb—to use the language of the local historian—"was brought to great distress by heavy taxation and numerous cesses. The Hindus burnt their corn-stacks and turned their cattle out to roam at large. Under the orders of the Sultán the Collectors and Magistrates laid waste the country, killing some of the land-owners and village chiefs and blinding others. Such of the unhappy inhabitants as escaped formed themselves into bands and took refuge in the jungles. So the country was ruined. The Sultán then proceeded on a hunting excursion to Baran, where—under his directions the whole of that neighbourhood was plundered and laid waste and the heads of the Hindus were brought in and hung upon the ramparts of the Baran Fort." Though it was a matter of impossibility to collect the revenue, the Hindu Governor was put to death for his failure to do so, and a vast number of his kinsmen, a Baniya clan called Baran-wálas, whose ancestors, had been settled in the town by its first founders, were driven into exile. Some of them emigrated to Murádabád, while others fled as far as Azamgarh and Gházipur, in both which districts they are now more numerously represented than in their original home.
Of those who remained at Baran, one family in the reign of Akbar acquired for themselves the post of hereditary Kánungo; and one of their descendants, Shaikh Roshan, who was converted to Islám by the persuasive arguments of Aurangzeb, founded the suburb—as it then was—called Shaikh Sarae, which now by the increase of population has become a very central locality. Of the same stock are Munshi Shaháb-ud-dín, the builder of the large mosque, which from its lofty situation is the most conspicuous feature in any general view of the town, and the late Masúm Ali Khán of Murádabád, whose son Munawar Ali Khán, being of weak intellect, is under the charge of the Court of Wards. The handsome range of shops, in the market-place, built in 1882, is part of his estate.
